War zones

Being asked to visit a war zone, or visit a near war zone, or visit a just finished being called a war zone for business reasons is not good. If a bullet has my name on it - stop the bus at the office called Deed Poll. I will be quite happy to complete any 20 page form in triplicate if necessary and please spare the time to send it around a multitude of departments if necessary and unnecessarily delaying my trip. And anyway my old signature has long lost its legibility as three vowels and two consonants have merged into a line. I need a new signature to rediscover my handwriting skillls. Bureaucracy process please do your best delaying worst.

And as a contrast, as a mirror image......Coming home to a war zone is also not good and cannot be talked about so readily, cannot be rejected so easily, it is by action and reaction not avoidable. A family unit in disarray again. It is my fault for not being there.


Single parenting by default. Hormone rages through what used to be a favoured son, putting the diss into dysfunctional family life and Bart Simpson is not merely a cartoon character with good comedic lines but a role model with bad lines. The Crisis management teams are not on call here for re-assurance and 'stay calm' message.


Brushing one's teenage teeth has become a challenge. apparently the not brushing of zellowing teeth is a statement of individuality for this generation, in tandem to the finding an inner self esteem, self image teenage adrenalin rush of arguining over flossing teeth has replaced glue sniffing. It is a symbol of resistance - a Rebel with a Cause called Dental Un-Hygiene. A favoured son with dentures in his mid thirties, whilst he is thinking I am only thirteen. I may need to hum.

Home is where the WiFi is

Expats excel or XL as I probably should use to prove clever dickiness in a world of bytes. Abbreviations, phrases, Buzzwords are used to define one's acumen, one's social strata. Mentioning 'synchronised', 'synergy' and 'paradigm', all in a single presentation keynote speech reacheves levels of smarty pants-ness previously thought open only to the spotty kids with glasses. A photographer blinds one so that I can achieve d-list celebrity staus by way of photographic glory for next year's company brochure and I can be the pin-up of the secretarial ladies and the dartboard of the hairy-backsided engineering team. Although it all could be lost if Keynote speecher says 'para-dig-em'. A career upward curve lost to the English language and its wonderful pronouciation. Paradigm is pronounced 'paradime' and don't ask me why my foreign friends


As a counterpoint, as a nemesis to executive stardom, as a dose of welcoming humility, one returns to home - the teenage home. The family pilgrimage to one's roots. Here paradigm would not get me past first base in either baseball or a blind date...para-what-never-mind-igem-or-imes- get-me a-Guiness-you-tosser. Here I am a now stranger, here the world has shifted so slightly that I am now a sore thumb, a digit on the backside of this valley, and a middle finger to the outer world. Here a life has changed, the buzzwords are a new slang spoken by faces I kind of know ... faces that were young, fit, lean and are now podgy, faces of former friends, old brothers in arms. They speak a new slang, new words having nuances known to this year's generation. One has become lost in time, a parallel universe corrupted by a new language, the new terms, I ahve lost a sense of one's roots. Slowly as one has moved seemingly upward, the place where one belonged has shifted sideways to another place. Home is not quite the home, it once was, perhaps ever was. And yet home is not the outer world, where I live.

Home is in no man's land, not the home of Residency papers. It is not the home of the Birth Certificate.

Home has been relocated to a virtual field in the blogosphere, a gypsy home of friends temporal, friends near forgotten, friends aging in step changes of quirky "Facebook" photos that resembles a United Nations 'most wanted' list, friends animated into a "Wee-me" cartoon, and interconnected by a mouse double-click. Home a hotel lobby with a computer sitting on knees on some distant continent touching base via E-mail with fingers dextrous to the eye, where once touching base actually involved fingers. Human touch relegated to a passing visit or a school reunion. Friends Reunited should be Friends Divided.


And Mam wishes one lived around the corner to post the card, pick-up the pension, do the shopping. So this is the dream they wanted for their son, to be seen once a year, her annual event, grandchildren are an occasional photograph with a weekly telephone commentary on a Mathematics test to prove life goes on without you...... and Facebook is beyond her athritic single click. What sort of son am I? Absent by a university education that parents sacrificed little things to make happen, to be the first in the family to rise to such academic heights, heights that I could climb out of the Valley.

It tis the time to be jolly.....

Ex-pat Christmassing, the best of times as a load of half friends, half wits and good wits gather to discuss which is the best wine, turkey leg or whatever crap joke is in the specially imported crackers; or the worst of times as friends and family are miles away in some distant land reading and half smiling at a crap joke from a cheap cracker.

Or best and worst of times the lottery of guaranteeing to see family and friends and making life that bit more special for everyone, but only if the trains are still running on the leaves on the track, the ice on the runway is de-iced. Returning home becomes an endurance test. A test of airport waiting, entertaining children still excited a bit, but a few minutes later a bit on the point of being bored and running amok.

And then some long hours later the smile, that fleeting tear of a mother, that knows its a bit special this year.